I am very grateful to my funders the @vivensa.bsky.social and @bartscharity.bsky.social for funding this research through seed awards. More research is desperately needed to understand the impact of menopause on immunity and I hope more funders consider this as an important research area. #immunosky

This study was an amazing Early Career researcher effort with Roel de Maeyer performing the functional monocyte assays, @oliviabracken.bsky.social performing the bioinformatic analysis, and my lovely lab member Justyna performing the Menopause analysis. I am very grateful for all their hard work.

Importantly the use of Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) in menopausal females kept their monocytes looking ‘young’ and they had improved phagocytosis as compared to age matched controls. Highlighting the potential immune benefits of HRT.

In this paper we demonstrate that there is an increase in inflammatory monocytes with altered proteome in post-menopausal females, which is not observed with age in males. Phagocytosis is significantly decreased in post-menopausal as compared to pre-menopausal females.

If you're based in the UK, and look after an individual with HLH in pregnancy or up to 6 weeks postpartum - please flag her to your local UKOSS reporter so we can finally have prospective data on this disease:

npeu.ox.ac.uk/ukoss/curren...

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And the most recent update of the UK HLH Getting It Right First Time Guideline (which is an excellent introduction to the investigation and management of this disease): gettingitrightfirsttime.co.uk/wp-content/u...

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